Valiant has just announced it’s teaming with Mexican publisher Kamite to distribute a new line of Spanish-language versions of the Valiant line. Foreign publishing deals are a smart way to cut your creative costs down and develop new audiences.

The Mexican comics industry is probably most familiar to American audiences via the lurid “photonovelas” you see on newsstands in areas with a large Spanish-speaking population. It is a hardy and well-developed business there, however. According to the pr, Kamite owns two comics shops in Mexico City and already publisher the Spanish editions of The Walking dead, The Simpsons and more.

Disclosure: Valiant is an advertiser on this site.

Valiant is proud to announce a new foreign publishing partnership with Kamite, one of Mexico’s leading publishers of comics and graphic novels, for a new line of Spanish language comic books, translating Valiant’s leading line of monthly super-hero titles.

The partnership will launch with the debut of newly translated editions of X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, and Shadowman this coming winter. More Valiant titles – including Harbinger, Archer & Armstrong, Quantum and Woody, Eternal Warrior, and Unity – will follow in 2014.

All of Valiant’s Spanish language Kamite titles will be available through Kamite’s two Mexico City comic book speciality stores, as well as via Grupo Sanborns, a major Mexican retail chain with more than 165 locations nationwide. Kamite will also host an array of Valiant-branded merchandise, produced by Cinderblock, through their online retail site.

“Valiant has quickly reestablished itself as one of the most exciting and vital publishers in the comics business today,” said Kamite CEO Miguel Ángel Lara del Valle. “We’re just over a year into the new Valiant Universe, and the timing couldn’t be better to introduce X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, Shadowman, and the like to our ever-expanding and eager readership in Mexico.”

“With successful foreign language publishing efforts already underway in Brazil, Spain, France, and Italy, Mexico is a perfect next step to bring the Valiant Universe to a whole new audience,” said Russell A. Brown, Valiant’s President of Consumer Products, Promotions, and Ad Sales. “These are characters that resonate globally, and Kamite’s dedicated team and incredible supply chain across Mexico make them an ideal partner for Spanish language publishing.”

As the Mexican publisher of titles including The Walking Dead, 300, Simpsons Comics, Spawn, and more, Kamite consists of professionals with extensive experience in publishing and media throughout the realm of comics, manga and trade paperbacks. Nationally, they are among Mexico’s most important publishing houses in the sector of science fiction, entertainment, and pop culture.

Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.

For Valiant, there is little risk.
Kamite licenses the work, and does the translation.
Valiant owns the original work, and most likely the translation as well.

Kamite prints the comics, and makes most of the money.
Kamite may not make money, in which case it stops publishing the translations.

Sometimes, as with Disney comics, the production is very cheap, as the licensee does not pay royalties to the original creators. (Which is why Don Rosa’s comics always appeared in Denmark first…his circulation was greatest there, and first publication was the only time he received royalties.)

As seen in the U.S. Direct Market, it does not take many copies to make a profit. Kamite seems adept at marketing foreign properties, and they get an entry into the superhero genre in Mexico.